landing a helicopter (and blade angle question)

[king of nowhere]

after many trials, and thanks to some advice i got here, i finally managed to make a helicopter that flies. yay!

unfortunately, i have a lot of troubles landing this thing. or doing any kind of fine manuever.

(yes, i am aware there are some... questionable design choices. but i want my helicopter to be fun to drive with internal view, hence a command module with plenty of windows, and i want to be able to load and unload it into a cargo bay, so i cannot use any of the bigger blades. and i need the wheels because there's no way i'm ever going to be able to fly the helicopter inside the cargo bay. Also, they are very resistant, which helps with rough landings)

 

the problem with landing is that i can't seem to find a way to lose vertical thrust in a controlled manner. as i gradually decelerate (i managed to put the engine control on the main accelerator) i abruptly go from having full thrust upward to having no thrust upwards at all. Even at 5% power the engines keep me in the air easily, and if i go below that they stop and i drop like a brick. the engines are probavbly overpowered, but they are the smaller available, and 2 engines won't lift this thing anyway.

lack of fine control is also caused by me getting thrust in unexpected directions. like, i activate the engines normally, and i move upwards and forward. i assume it's intended, because most of the times you want to move your helicopter in a specific direction. but if i want to cancel that forward thrust, i cannot do it easily. which adds to the landing problem, because if i try to hover stationary and gradually reduce power to the engine, i start moving forward.

another thing i noticed is that i'm severely limited in speed. i assume it has to do with blade angle: when the helicopter starts moving, the actual blade angle will be modified on blade speed and air speed according to pitagora's theorem, and at a certain air speed the angle will become 0 and i will have no thrust. hence why all rotary engines have changable blade angles. however, i don't have any convenient way to change blade angle in mid-flight. having 4 helixes, i must select them all and change them one at a time, which is awfully impractical at best, when it won't make me lost control in the first place. with the action groups i can easily change the blades between extended and retracted, and i can use that to change between 2 different angles. but i don't see how to get better tuning. I think this kind of tuning would also be the key to landing safely. that parachute is meant for an emergency, not as the primary landing gear!

so, there's lots of issues. any help with any of those will be greatly appreciated

Edited August 15, 2020 by king of nowhere

[Serenity]

16 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

after many trials, and thanks to some advice i got here, i finally managed to make a helicopter that flies. yay!

unfortunately, i have a lot of troubles landing this thing. or doing any kind of fine manuever.

I know its not the best info you can get but my advice is....start with a stock helicopter or a simple design that works kinda the way you want and start adding/changing one part/thing at a time.

Hopefully more will come here to help with specific info, but i just wanted to say what i usually do, and adding one by one in a working craft and see what goes wrong and right its a good ''simple'' way to figure out as you go.

Again, hopefully more will drop in here and we learn more specific/valuable info etc.

Edited August 15, 2020 by Boyster

[king of nowhere]

so, i discovered two interesting facts trying stock helicopters

1) all stock helicopters use the KAL controller ( which i haven't figured out how to use.) to do something with blade angles.

so, it would seem i'd need to learn the KAL if i want to make helicopters, except that the most important fact is

2) stock helicopters don't work better than mine. even with those, at the first slight mistake they start going wild and i can't get them back under control.

so, it seems it's mostly to do with my piloting skills.

[Wobbly Av8r]

This is the first time I read your original post, k.o.n. but maybe this can help - you don/t need to understand the KAL-1000 for this, although learning it will definitely expand your ability to make some very cool stuff!

In the VAB, go to the Actions Screen and assign ALL propeller blades to "Translate U/D" or "Translate F/B" so that you can control the pitch of your blades with the "I" or "K" keys (if you chose Translate U/D) or the "H" and "N" keys if you chose "Translate F/B". Then, for ALL of the propellers, use the PAW menu (Part Action Window - the right-click menu) and choose "Deploy" and set the Target Deployment to "0".

No matter how much throttle they have, if you give them 0 or even a slightly negative pitch, it will allow you to still land, or maybe I should say, they will not keep you in the air!

Good luck!

Edited August 23, 2020 by Wobbly Av8r

[Echo__3]

This video describes how to set up the controls for a helicopter. 

[king of nowhere]

5 hours ago, Echo__3 said:

This video describes how to set up the controls for a helicopter. 

so, serendipity.

i did not learn how to improve flying control to the helicopterover. that design used in the video would make it too big to fit in the cargo bay like i want (i spent, like, 3 days working on a cargo bay and rover design that would let me deploy a robotic arm from the bay, pick up the rover, pull it into the bay, without clipping or pieces sticking out).

But! I learned that i have an alternate design for the landing module, which is better suited for rovers or vehicles; being narrower, it should even make it easier to stick in the cargo bay!

and even most important, i finally learned how to make two rotors one on top of the other! i was always trying to attach one rotor on top of the other, which would not work because their rotations would disrupt each other. i never considered that it would be a trick with clipping. this is not terribly useful for helicopterover, but it comes very handy for helicopterocket, the mother vehicle that should pick up helicopterover in its cargo bay, fly up in eve's atmosphere high enough to skip the worst of the aerodinamics issues, and fly to orbit. i was having serious issues fidning space for rotor blades, this allows me to skip some lateral struts i used to put more rotors that were increasing dry weight and worsening aerodinamics.

[king of nowhere]

is there a difference between helicopter blades and helix blades, large and small rotors?

because the helicopterover is now flying very well. but its mothership, a 200-ton rocket that's supposed to get through the worst of eve's atmosphere as helicopter, uses the largest rotors and blades, and it works in kerbin's atmosphere but not on eve. on eve, it always capsizes immediately. since it works on kerbin, it should not be an issue of center of mass.

[Wobbly Av8r]

7 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

is there a difference between helicopter blades and helix blades, large and small rotors?

Aerodynamically, an airfoil is an airfoil, regardless. Of course each airfoil has its strengths and weakness, depending on how it is used.

I can't be sure this is your problem, but Eve's atmosphere is very dense, if I recall correctly; for the same reason we don't use the same kinds of propeller blades in the air (less dense) as we do in water (much more dense), you may need to make an adjustment to your lifting devices operating in a different density of atmosphere.

Hope that helps.

Good luck!

[king of nowhere]

12 hours ago, Wobbly Av8r said:

I can't be sure this is your problem, but Eve's atmosphere is very dense, if I recall correctly; for the same reason we don't use the same kinds of propeller blades in the air (less dense) as we do in water (much more dense), you may need to make an adjustment to your lifting devices operating in a different density of atmosphere.

Hope that helps.

Good luck!

then again, i need my helicopterocket to get as high as possible as helicopter before i turn on the rockets. otherwise i still get screwed by the atmosphere. especially since the helicopter blades give the rocket a poor aerodynamics.

 

so far, my helicopterover+helicopterocket project is almost complete. helicopterover is done. it flies well in kerbin, eve, laythe. it's not a perfect helicopter, but light enough that some sas is enough to keep it stable without adjusting the controls.

i haven't managed to land it as helicopter. i tried, but when it starts moving downward, suddenly the blades don't generate enough lift anymore, so it starts plummeting. only way i have to fix this is to throttle up again. but i have a parachute, i use that to land. the engineer on board then packs it up for another use. then i can manuever it on the ground on wheels.

helicopterover then moves underneath helicopterocket. a robotic arm inside helicopterocket cargo bay unfolds, grabs helicopterover, and brings it into the cargo bay. the cargo bay closes and holds helicopterover, with no clipping involved; the whole movement looks natural.

the helicoptercoket activates its rotors, and goes up. it goes up as much as it can, then it turns on the rocket and reaches orbit, where yet another piece of the spaceship will dock to it and refuel. it works on kerbin. i can reach about 9000 meters with the rotors, then i use the rocket. i achieve orbit if i do the ascent well. on eve i won't have enough fuel to circularize orbit, but i can get a good enough suborbital trajectory that i can use the orbiter to dock the helicopterocket and drag it to full orbit. i can make this manuever work for up to 1 km/s of difference. it seems a full eve ssto is beyond my skill, but that's fully reusable, which is enough for my purposes.

there is only one thing i haven't managed so far: eve ascent.

i start my rotors, i go up, everything seems to go well for a while, then suddenly the helicopterocket capsizes. and i can't find any apparent reason, which is why i am unable to fix this.

here i am ascending, all looks nominal. i get some strange values for lift on the blades, i have no idea why they change so much and often go in the negative. is it relevant? is it normal for those values to shake? no idea

i moved upward some more, still all looks right. lift values are always very shaky for no apparent reason. forward rotors seem to have a slightly lower rpm than backwards rotor. is that relevant, or just statistical anomaly? and why would it have lower rpm when the two rotors are exactly identical??

with no apparent reason, at some point forward rotors will slow down. just like that. lift values are still going up and down at random, making me question if they have any real usefulness. they were reliable for helicopterover, maybe this thing is too big and my pc can't calculate it accurately? but it should lag in this case, and it doesn't.

at this point, doom is inevitable.

I'm baffled, and i would like the understand the problem here.

[Wobbly Av8r]

Wow - thanks for posting the images with the PAW data...I have my suspicions but rather than lead you on a wild goose chase, I'm gonna have to run a few tests first -  but unless someone else comes up with the answer sooner, I'll get back to you!

[Wobbly Av8r]

Well, the density thing is definitely a factor, but what I found to be the difference between success and failure was the dynamic coupling / feedback loop of the coaxial rotors...

The best solution I can offer is that you turn on the Forces Overlay (default F12 key) and watch what happens when you adjust the pitch of the blades (aka Deploy Angle) as each rotor tends to not change at the exact same rate, even though they may be bound to the same key / key sequence. On Kerbin, it wasn't a significant factor but on Eve, the extra thick atmosphere magnified the small blade angle difference and as a result, one rotor would suddenly produce a lot of upward force evidently causing the coaxial rotor to alter its aerodynamics, usually causing a drastic change in magnitude and direction in the opposite direction.

The only viable solution I found to stabilize the situation was to select the PAW's "#" option (which changes value sliders into exact number input - Advanced Tweakables must be enabled) which allowed me to set the exact same number in both "Deploy Angle" values, which then caused the coaxial motor/rotor combination to act in synergy without a 'feedback loop'. I wouldn't even venture to guess what emulation is being displayed in this case...

[Edit: I can tell you that in reality, as a propeller pulls itself through the air, because its movement through the air changes the angle of attack of the blades, it does in essence reduce the angle of attack of its 'bite', and seeing that the angle of attack is mimicked, it MAY have something to do with that, but I would not expect it to react in the manner in which is being simulated ]

Edited August 27, 2020 by Wobbly Av8r

[king of nowhere]

2 hours ago, Wobbly Av8r said:

Well, the density thing is definitely a factor, but what I found to be the difference between success and failure was the dynamic coupling / feedback loop of the coaxial rotors...

The best solution I can offer is that you turn on the Forces Overlay (default F12 key) and watch what happens when you adjust the pitch of the blades (aka Deploy Angle) as each rotor tends to not change at the exact same rate, even though they may be bound to the same key / key sequence. On Kerbin, it wasn't a significant factor but on Eve, the extra thick atmosphere magnified the small blade angle difference and as a result, one rotor would suddenly produce a lot of upward force evidently causing the coaxial rotor to alter its aerodynamics, usually causing a drastic change in magnitude and direction in the opposite direction.

The only viable solution I found to stabilize the situation was to select the PAW's "#" option (which changes value sliders into exact number input - Advanced Tweakables must be enabled) which allowed me to set the exact same number in both "Deploy Angle" values, which then caused the coaxial motor/rotor combination to act in synergy without a 'feedback loop'. I wouldn't even venture to guess what emulation is being displayed in this case...

[Edit: I can tell you that in reality, as a propeller pulls itself through the air, because its movement through the air changes the angle of attack of the blades, it does in essence reduce the angle of attack of its 'bite', and seeing that the angle of attack is mimicked, it MAY have something to do with that, but I would not expect it to react in the manner in which is being simulated ]

thank you very much. i've been posting questions about helicopters for a while, and i got very few good answers; it appears not many people in this community have much practice with them, and i was pessimistic about my chances of having someone look into such a complex thing as my vehicle.

[Wobbly Av8r]

I appreciate your gratitude, k.o.n., but my guess about why few (if any) respond to your dilemma has more to do with the idea that, while helicopter aerodynamics can indeed be complicated, they are made even more so because of the way the software attempting to mimic it is designed / implemented. Shy of actually being the author of the code producing the results we witness, it is difficult to put a thumb on problems like yours, and I am no exception to that other than I'd like to think I understand what they are TRYING to do, whether it's effective or not.

I would be VERY interested in seeing if your issue improves by ensuring the blade pitch (Deploy Angle) is made identical and/or the results of observing the Forces Overlay as you attempt to escape Eve's atmosphere...

Good luck!

[king of nowhere]

8 hours ago, Wobbly Av8r said:

I would be VERY interested in seeing if your issue improves by ensuring the blade pitch (Deploy Angle) is made identical and/or the results of observing the Forces Overlay as you attempt to escape Eve's atmosphere...

Good luck!

well, youi were indeed right that there was a small difference with one blade angle caused by uncertainty in the sliding bar. i fixed that. the issue improved.

now i capsize around 1000 meters, instead of around 800. though i even made it to 1600 m once

so, this is the start. rotors are standing still, blades are retracted. interestingly, despite everything standing still, two blades belonging to the same rotor still show very different attack angles. how can they have different attack angles when they are all standing still is beyond me. unless maybe this game is simulating wind speed, but it says air speed 0. or maybe it's an artifact of dividing by 0. there is still one blade angle different here, i fixed after taking this screenshot.

here i just started flying, everything is nominal. interestingly, the forward rotors are slightly faster than the backwards ones here, so it's not a systemic problem. as asked, i activated the aerodinamic overlay, if you can make any sense of it.

angle of attach changes seemingly at random even on blades attached to the same rotor

i went upward a bit, all still looks normal

still more upwards, now the slowing down of the forward rotors is noticeable. in my most successful flight, when i reached 1600 m, the forward rotor did slow down several times to 240 rpm, only to pick up speed again. once it fell below that value, though, it never recovered.

backwards rotors are accelerating, as would be expected because the atmosphere is less dense

finally, the helicopterocket is starting to capsize.

[king of nowhere]

looks like i found a workaround. blade angle was 10°, which is good to get grip in the high atmosphere, but in the dense lower atmosphere of eve overloads the rotors too much. i linked the blade angle to a kal controller to be able to change them during the ascent (i'm controlling the kal manually, feels safer) and by using a 4° blade angle i was able to lift off from eve surface without problems. as i move upwards, i'm gradually increasing it when i start losing speed.

i reached 20 km of altitude, could have gone a bit higher but i raised the blade angle too fast without raising the rotor power at the same time, which resulted in the rotors abruptly slowing and the ship losing control. still, from experiment in kerbin atmosphere, that's close to the limit. maybe i can get to 25 km, i doubt much higher. the ascent lasted for half an hour

i will need more power generation. helicopterocket packs 30k battery power and a lot of solar panels, that's enough to reach the upper limit on laythe and kerbin but not on eve, where i need 100% rotor power and i have a much longer ascent. still, it should be no problem.

i also realized i don't need isru capacity on helicopterocket; if i have an orbiter to pick it up, the same orbiter can be the one to refuel at gilly. helicopterocket can land fully fueled, it only needs a little bit of rocket to slow down just before touchdown (putting enough parachutes to slow it enough on laythe would have been too much weight, i put enough parachutes that i can glide down at a moderate speed and a quick rocket burn in the end is enough for a safe landing). this will save me 5 tons of dry weight, more than compensating all the extra solar panels i will have to put in (EDIT: or maybe not; atmospheric reentry looks more troubling than anticipated, and i may have to resort to rocket braking there too). i also have to experiment with warious ascent profiles, if i manage to get by without ever using 100% rotor power i may get away with reducing the motors, which would save another ton or two.

Edited August 28, 2020 by king of nowhere

[king of nowhere]

on the down side, i'm now trying the rockets, and i suspect that the previous time i did this, i forgot to deactivate simplified mode. i still need to burn over 2000 m/s to get out of the atmosphere, and i can't get close to orbit. those helkicopter blades are causing a lot of aerodinamic problems for rocket ascent (unsurprisingly). still, it's something i can work with. i am confident i will be able to complete my vehicle within a few weeks.

Edited August 28, 2020 by king of nowhere

[king of nowhere]

i found another source of problems. the rotors have some random variability, and sometimes both rotors on one side will slow down a bit compared to the others. this wouldn't cause any problem, the difference only lasts for a few seconds. but! this difference causes the part of the rocket where the blades are moving faster to go upwards. to compensate this movement, the game does something with the rotors to avoid the rocket tilting. but this change in blade angles increases friction with the atmosphere, fixing the tilt, but making those slower rotors slow down even more. this movement feeds upon itself.

i discovered that i can avoid this mechanism simply by reducing the maximum rpm of the faster rotors. unfortunately, it's not reliable enough to use during ascent. i will study the possibility, though.

counterintuitively, this mechanism happens more often at higher altitudes. not sure why.

[Wobbly Av8r]

Again, thanks for posting the imagery, k.o.n., and I think a lot of your observations are valid so I would only have a couple of comments that may help: 1) It appears as though, for each set of coaxial rotors, both top and bottom rotor blades are oriented in the same direction; my original assumption was that your rotors, each coaxial pair, rotated in opposite directions... are each pair actually rotating in the SAME direction, or if they are turning OPPOSITE of each other, one set of blades is essentially turning backwards?, and 2) What construction technique did you use to assemble the rotors - that process in general is not very straight forward; you may have manually adjusted the "zero" angle, and as a result, you are getting differing angles-of-attack on each blade when stationary?

The easiest way I've found of attaching the blades to motor / rotor hub is make sure Toggle Snap is on, and when the blade snaps to the motor node, press W once and place the part. THEN, after its placed, for a counter-rotating rotor, use the Variant selection "Counterclockwise" in the Blade's PAW, and then in the Motor's PAW, select Rotation Counterclockwise.

FWIW, in your images, the purple / magenta lift vectors should all be pointed UP, especially when you begin; possibly this also points to an assembly issue back at the VAB/SPH on Kerbin... If the bottom set of blades is rotating opposite to their design, it could help to explain some of your flight issues?

[king of nowhere]

for each couple of rotors (as in, two rotors put on top of each other), one is turning in one direction, the other opposite.

for building, i put an octogonal strut on the ship, to anchor both rothors to it with the clipping trick. then i attached the blades with the toggle snap (that's the name of the tool to attach at fixed angles, right?); it aligns them vertically by default, i rotated them horizontally manually (with toggle snap). then i set the angle when opened, initially it was 10 degrees for all. for inverting one rotor for each pair, i choose "direction: inverted", and for the blades, again, i choose "inverted". I have no idea why there are so many ways to invert the blades rotation that all do apparently the same thing. i'm suspecting perhaps they do not do exactly the same thing. i put autostrut on rotors, not blades, as autostrut don't mix well with moving parts. this setup would fly in kerbin and laythe, but not eve.

when i realize a lower blade angle may help in eve, i put on a kal controller, and i set a program to change blade angle from 0 to 15 degrees. i set an identical program for all four blades. i control that manually, adjusting the sliding bar (i can't come up with a better way to name it, not even in my native language) manually as i go up. and i selected "rigid attachment" for the blades. that experiment went well, but it drained the batteries too fast. even making a continuous line of solar panels around the ship (which i did, later), i could not supply enough electricity.

i decreased rotor power to 75% on all rotors, that's the most i can afford to consume (and i saved 1.6 tons in the process). but now the rotors aren't powerful enough to propel the blades to full speed in low eve atmosphere, which is causing problems again. next thing i will try will be another kal controller to set maximum rpm; i came to the conclusion that if the problem is one rotor going faster than the other and the other unable to catch up, then forcing all rotors to slow down should work. the alternative, powering up the rotors again and swapping the current solar panels i'm using for gigangtors, would add too much weight and hurt aerodinamics even more. even then, i'm not sure i'd be able to keep the rotors powered for the 30-minute ascent. i will power up the rotors only if it can lift me a few more kilometers bfore i have to use rockets, and i would use them at half power through most of the ascent in that case.

by the way, i tried removing the convert-o-tron and drill and try for full gliding descent, unsuccessfully. even using every trick (opening the cargo bay to brake, tilting the ship so that the fusolage would provide some lift and keep me higher in the atmosphere for a bit longer, spinning to cool pieces off) i was unable to land the thing safely without adding at least two tons of wings to help braking. even then, it was a very narrow thing, a dozen pieces reaching the deepest red, most of them times something did break anyway. and i still needed to burn some fuel to finish landing, and those wings would increase drag going up. adding heat shields also increased weight very fast. not enough gain for the effort. so i will rocket brake on atmospheric reentry, and replenish fuel on land. i saved weight by swapping the big convertotron for a small one, at the price of decuplicating the time needed for refueling. i also ditched two radiators.

[king of nowhere]

balancing the rocket to give a uniform push has been a challenge, as the ship is asymmetrical (i tried several reworks of the shape, to make it symmetrical while keeping the cargo bay mehcanism, none was successful). i moved the engine upwards and downwards by small increments until i could find the closest to the center of mass. i could not center it perfectly, and i decided to have it tilt down slightly (in a vacuum test), so that in atmosphere it should counteract the drag caused by the rotors and blades. still, leaving the atmosphere is a bumpy ride, the ship won't stand still, putting on autopilot and telling it to keep prograde results in the ship tilting too fast. it also starts spinning at some point. getting out of the atmosphere requires all my piloting skill, succeeds only half the times, and it is very expensive. i'm uncertain how much of that is drag by the blades and how much is uneven push. i'm fairly sure the lack of a nose cone on the forward docking port is not a huge part of it, though i will experiment there too

[Wobbly Av8r]

If your coaxial rotors are rotating in opposite directions, one set of blades (the bottom ones, I presume because of their performance) are being rotated backwards. Here's an example of what it should look like (orientation):

https://imgur.com/M6g60q3

Edited August 28, 2020 by Wobbly Av8r
Clarification of what the image demonstrates

[king of nowhere]

ok, i did it. upper rotor rotates counterclockwise, lower rotor is clockwise.

but i haven't noticed any improvement in performance.

limiting the rounds per minute to avoid overtaxing the rotor and blades work, instead. but it seems i still need 100% power to reach higher. on kerbin i get to a point where even with lower throttle and higher blade angle the rotors are moving at full speed, but on eve this does not seem to happen. the air is still too thick.

[Wobbly Av8r]

Well, I did an extended test of a coaxial rotor vessel from the surface of the Explodium Sea up to 25,000 m and after taking pains to make sure both rotors were contributing the same amount of Deploy Angle (and almost an hour and a half of mission time without warp!) had no issues from an aerodynamic point of view. And all this on less than 11 kg of fuel (and using less than 27% torque on each motor), but of course I didn't start by having to fly to Eve or descend to its surface, but it was interesting to - given what I observed - validate the idea that if one were able to get things adequately slowed after achieving an orbit around Eve, the helicopter assisted descent / ascent could hold a lot of promise...

I'm going to repeat the experiment with counter-rotating tandem rotors to see if that configuration can replicate a level of success that is similar, but as I said, it takes time because physics warp makes the whole rig unstable so I've had to do it in real time.

Not sure what effect is causing your issue, but overall, given all that has been revealed so far, the only additional tips I can offer are to take it slow and easy, placing more emphasis on keeping all rotors producing positive lift more or less equivalently and keep the vertical speed less than 10 m/s?? Maybe it's the vertical speed and its affect on the angle of attack that is creating your issue? My experimental trip began at 5.5 m/s and slowly reduced to 4 m/s at 25,000 m but numbers remained very stable and only changed slowly...

Again, Good Luck!

Edited August 29, 2020 by Wobbly Av8r
Oops...

[king of nowhere]

4 hours ago, Wobbly Av8r said:

Not sure what effect is causing your issue, but overall, given all that has been revealed so far, the only additional tips I can offer are to take it slow and easy, placing more emphasis on keeping all rotors producing positive lift more or less equivalently and keep the vertical speed less than 10 m/s?? Maybe it's the vertical speed and its affect on the angle of attack that is creating your issue? My experimental trip began at 5.5 m/s and slowly reduced to 4 m/s at 25,000 m but numbers remained very stable and only changed slowly...

Again, Good Luck!

my vertical speed is between 8 and 15 m/s. as i move upwards, i also tend to pick up lateral speed. the whole rotor mechanism is pretty stable now that i refined the whole procedure, i have to do it in real time but i can do something else while ksp run in the background. i reach about 19 km before stalling. i even got rid of some batteries. right now, i have fixed the rotor ascent.

unfortunately, once i turn off the rotors and start the rockets, orbit is still far. even though i have 3500 m/s available, i can barely reach a suborbital trajectory. i need at least 2 km/s more to get to orbit. 1 km/s would be the bare minimum to try to have an orbiter slow down and intercept the rocket with some hope of success, and even that goal is pretty far.

the general idea is sound, but i may have to scrap the design and restart from scratch after several weeks of working on this project I need some serious edge to get the deltaV I'm missing.

Edited August 29, 2020 by king of nowhere

[Rpatto92]

@king of nowhere @Echo__3 

Hey, been working on a helicopter build guide for a good while. I've figured most of this stuff out now and how exactly it translates into Kerbal. 

here's a link: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/218964-helicopter-build-guide/

Feel free to leave me a comment or any questions you might have.